


Impression

by h0ldthiscat



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 06:52:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5858677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/h0ldthiscat/pseuds/h0ldthiscat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She tries not to grin as he adopts an expression not unlike her own often incredulous glower.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impression

Scully strides into the office, her heels clicking all the way over to Mulder’s desk where she drops a burgundy colored folder and proclaims, her voice a little affected, “Mulder, you’re not going to believe this.”

He looks up, brow furrowed. “Try me.”

She opens the folder and points to the first piece of paper, a quickly-drawn sketch of the Lower Forty-Eight. She points to the center, where a cluster of red x’s mark the spot. “Seven known cases of lycanthropy in the Midwest in the last nineteen years and all of them occurred along the same hundred-mile stretch of the Mississippi. Clearly there’s something at work here that needs investigating.”

“Lycanthropy?” Mulder scoffs. “That’s the paranormal trope you’re going with for your impression of me?”

“Well I didn’t have time to set up _slides_ , like you normally do,” she chuffs, snatching the folder back. “Come on, you do me now.”

“Is that part of your impression, the dirty talk?” he teases, wagging his eyebrows. “Because I assure you I am nothing short of a gentleman.”

“Come on, Mulder,” she sighs. 

With an inscrutable look, he takes the folder back and pretends to sift through the imaginary research with a pinched brow and a puckered lip. “This evidence is inconclusive, Scully. Correlation does not imply causation, every--”

“Oh come on!” she interrupts. “I would never say something so trite or… undergraduate.”

“Fine.” He adjusts in his chair, shifting back into his Scully character. She tries not to grin as he adopts an expression not unlike her own often incredulous glower. “The time frame we’re looking at here is far too broad,” he says, the pitch of his voice just slightly higher. “If these were all within the past five years I might say you’ve got a case, but this is twenty years’ worth of data here, Scully.”

“The Mississippi River is two thousand, three hundred and twenty miles long, Mulder. No matter how much time has elapsed, you have to admit it’s compelling that all these episodes have occurred so close together.” She squares her shoulders and puts her hands on her hips, trying to take up the space he does at nearly a whole foot taller than her. 

“Look, Scully, I’m not saying it’s not compelling, I just think you’re--” The phone chirps on his desk and cuts him off abruptly. Mulder picks up. “Yessir.”

Scully exhales, her heart pounding loudly in her ears. She is a little giddy. This is fun. She’s having _fun_.

“We will. Thank you sir.”

“Skinner?” she asks, after he’s hung up. 

“Back to the grind,” he says, tapping the envelope of receipts that rests on the edge of the desk. 

“Who are you and what have you done with Fox Mulder?” she needles, feeling a smirk twist her mouth.

“Don’t worry, no shapeshifters here.” He pops a sunflower seed. 

Scully sighs and plops back down into her chair. Expense reports are by far her least favorite part of field work, but she admits that the whole process puts her in a sort of trance state. The organizing of receipts, the reconciling of petty cash, the checking and double checking of bill group numbers. She’d told Mulder once that it relaxed her and he’d laughed in her face. 

He laughs in her face a lot less these days, but now that she’s in remission at least he laughs again. She hadn’t realized how much she’d become accustomed to it, to their banter, to their somehow harmonious discord.

She sheds her blazer and hangs it on the back of her chair, then rolls up the sleeves of her blouse. The receipts crinkle beneath her fingers, her wrists. One for 13.2 gallons of gas, one for breakfast at a place called “Easy Pete’s.” One for--

“Was this Mableton or Frederick?” she asks, holding up a receipt for their rental car. 

Mulder doesn’t look up, still sifting through his own receipts. “Isn’t there a date on it?”

“It’s rubbed off, down here at the bottom.”

He takes it from her, struggles to read the description of the vehicle. She wonders why he doesn’t wear those glasses anymore. “Frederick, I think,” he says. “The case we helped VC on. The guy who--”

“Mmm!” she cuts him off with a sharp sound, raising a hand and shaking her head. “Yuck. I remember the one.”

They fall into a comfortable silence, pens scratching against paper, coffee mugs clinking dully against the wood laminate of the desk. Scully crosses her legs and lets the heel of one shoe dangle off her foot. 

“Mmm!” Mulder says quietly after a while, smiling at the desk. When she looks up he explains, “Working on my impression of you.” 

“So am I,” she says, gesturing to the flowing sleeves of her blouse, rolled neatly up her forearms. “This is practically your uniform.”

“You’re missing the paisley tie,” he teases, and loosens the knot at the hollow of his throat. “Not paisley today, but little planets will have to do.”

“No, Mul--come on,” she futilely protests as he lifts the tie over his head and brings it to her across the desk.

“Come on, it’s only fair.” Mulder lowers his tie around her neck, slipping it inside the satiny collar of her blouse. His fingers are cold against her neck and she gasps, starts. 

“S’cold,” she explains, shivering forward in her chair. Her fingers rise to her throat where she fingers the knot of his tie, smooth in her hand. 

“Sorry.” Behind her, she hears him breathe into his palms and rub them together to warm them up. Then she feels his hands on her shoulders, strong and spreading warmth down her spine. She shivers again, a different kind. 

“Cold?” he asks. 

“No,” Scully hears herself say, leaving her body as his fingers lightly knead her scapulae. Her eyes slide shut and she concentrates on the heat radiating from his hands, the way his palms feel pressing down on her shoulders, her neck, settling her vertebrae into place. She feels a loosening in her lower back and is vaguely aware of him speaking, but the pleasure she’s experiencing is so great her ears are ringing. 

Mulder’s thumb slides up her neck, pressing at the sensitive spot just behind her earlobe and she gasps, yanking herself out of her trance and lurching forward in her chair.

“Cold?” he repeats, his voice soft and sweet in a way she’s only heard a handful of times before. His hands still work lightly at her shoulders.

“No,” she says, her mouth very dry. “It’s fine.”

Mulder gives her shoulders a final squeeze and steps away, leaving her feeling very chilly. “Is the Mississippi River really two thousand… what was it?”

“Two thousand, three hundred and twenty feet long, yeah,” she rattles off, ears still ringing. 

“Your Mulder’s not half bad, you’ve got the photographic memory down pat,” he commends her from the coffee pot, where he’s refilling their mugs, long gone cold. 

“Just rote memory, I’m afraid,” she says, absently playing with the end of his tie still around her neck. “I did a project on the Mississippi River in the fourth grade. Some things stick.”

“The more you know,” Mulder says, raising an eyebrow and flying in her cup of coffee like a shooting star. 

She chuckles in spite of herself as she sees that he’s given her his mug, emblazoned with a green misshapen head and the words “Illegal Alien.” He sits down across from her and sips from her “Class of ‘86” mug, making a funny face at Testudo. 

“That tie looks better on you than it ever does on me,” he tells her, raising the mug to his lips again and taking a sip. 

“Cold?” she asks, feeling brave.

“No,” he answers. “It’s not.”


End file.
